Funding helps turn teachers into rangers

Friends of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park has received a $12,000 grant from Verizon to empower teachers with science and technology. Next spring and summer, the grant will fund two teacher workshops in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park focusing on adapting lesson plans to curriculum changes and new science content, and current technology.

In total, 60 teachers will participate in the workshops. The grant also provides bus transportation so the teachers can bring their students back to the national park on a fieldtrip through the “Parks as Classrooms” program. The program will serve teachers from East Tennessee and Western North Carolina.

Additionally, two teachers will have the opportunity to conduct scientific studies in the Park working alongside staff, and to assist with summer ranger education programs. This initiative is called Teacher-Ranger-Teacher because participants pick up information and new ideas while performing ranger duties in the national park which they take back to their classrooms and to other teachers.